Using Gold To Turn Trees Into Street Lights

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

A group of scientists from Taiwan has discovered a way to potentially add more trees to the urban landscape while reducing the number of street lights. And the secret is gold. By injecting gold nanoparticles into the leaves of plants, the scientists were able to affect the chlorophyll inside the plant's leaves, which resulted in a blue-violet fluorescence.

The discovery was stumbled upon while doing research into an alternative light source to LEDs, which are both expensive and can feature toxic chemicals. Not only would luminescent trees eliminate both of those factors, they would also require no electricity and have the added benefit of increasing the number of trees and plant life around us. It'd be like bringing a touch of Avatar to the city.

"In the future, bio-LED could be used to make roadside trees luminescent at night. This will save energy and absorb CO2 as the bio-LED luminescence will cause the chloroplast to conduct photosynthesis," said Dr. Yen-Hsun Su in the interview with Chemistry World.